A Thousand Times Over
by Pandastacia
Summary: He never could have guessed that the future hinged on whether he said yes or no. He chose no. And so the dominoes fell. Non-massacre. ItaSakuSasu
1. Justification

**disclaimer**: I do not own Naruto.  
**dedication**: to those moments where you look around you & appreciate how the times change, but the most important things stay the same. to having the serenity to accept the things you can't change, the courage to change the things you can, & the wisdom to know the difference.  
**betareader**: to selene, for talking me through some essential parts of this chapter. & beta-ing this "chapter". thank you!  
**important note!**: this story takes an alternate path from the manga- starting at the massacre. the small notes that are different- the bits that are different from canon- are mentioned in this chapter.

* * *

Prologue: Justification

_"Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives." Richard Bach_

* * *

_Ten Years Ago  
_**Uchiha Compound**

At half past three, Itachi found himself sitting on his bed. All of the lights were off- he'd merely told his mother that he'd felt something like a migraine so as to excuse himself from the midday snack. His fingers weren't trembling as he looked at the flat blade of the katana in his grasp, glinting under the faint moonbeams.

Maybe they should be trembling, Itachi thought clinically as he turned the weapon over with care in his hands to look at the imperfect gleam. Maybe there was something wrong with him. Here he was, contemplating- no, contemplating would mean that he was considering not doing it. He was going to go through with this- it was part of this long, dirty plan to cleanse his clan from the village. After all, there was no alternative. Else, the rest of the village would fall under their rule. There was no peace in that, and so there was no choice.

There was a _plan_.

If he had to be honest though (what was honesty, in the life of a shinobi?), he would have to say that he was surprised everything had gone this smoothly thus far. His cousin, though suspicious of him, didn't seem to think too much of his unusual behavior- there had been no conflict, something he'd expected because of Shisui's role as the clan's spy.

Everything was going smoothly.

But he could not deny that he wished something would go wrong. Itachi wished that something would come between him and the actions he was about to take- something that would legitimize the abortion of the plan so he wouldn't have to take the lives of the only family he knew. He would take the slightest excuse, no matter how cowardly, to avoid this. How many thirteen year olds have to mete out this sort of punishment…

What he'd give to be normal.

Which only returned him to the thought of the katana in his hand- the knife that would soon look like it was bleeding as it slit its way through flesh and bone until everything looked like a sanguine nightmare. Why weren't his hands trembling as they knew the action they were about to take? Why wasn't he more scared? Most people would be scared. Was he really such a demon that the thought of his family dying beneath his blade did nothing more than send that usual rush of adrenaline running through his body?

Somewhere, a clock ticked four o'clock and Itachi stood up as if on auto-pilot. His blood felt like ice, flowing through his blood, but all the young boy felt was the pounding of his heart from deep within his body. His little brother was still at the academy; his parents were sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea.

They were to be last.

That wasn't part of The Plan, but it was part of _his_. He'd thought it through- first, he'd kill the other clan members first, ending with his own parents. It would all be silent, no hint that anything was going on besides for the unnatural lack of sound. But it'd be perfectly timed; he'd wait until he felt Sasuke's underdeveloped supply of chakra enter the compound to strike his own family's fresh blood upon the walls. Itachi would stand over their mother at just the right moment so that Sasuke could watch her bleed into the flooring, where the stain would never removed.

A cough caught him unaware and he hacked into his fist. Looking at it under the darkness, he couldn't see the blood that he knew was there. That was the key part of the plan. The secret illness- his crucial crutch- that would lead his plan to completion. He fully expected Sasuke to hate him. It _had_ to happen. He was counting on that richness of emotion in Sasuke to make this whole thing _roll_. He counted on Sasuke hating him to the ends of the earth and back for this so that Sasuke could kill him, believing that it was for Itachi's selfish reasons that the death of the people he loved had happened.

As Itachi looked out the window, he saw the glint of a Sharingan outside of his windows and a chill felt its way down his spine. He didn't have a choice in this, he reminded himself. _He_ wouldn't let him. Madara Uchiha was going to stand beside him as he made the first cut, spreading red blood, making sure he didn't do otherwise.

Sliding the standard ANBU katana into its sheath upon his back and unhooking the mask from his belt, Itachi walked to his door and opened it noiselessly before making his way down the hall. He didn't look into any of the mirrors that decorated the wall; he didn't need to look into them to know he was paler than the ghosts of lore.

The hall made its way to the door, and not for the first time, he wished that it didn't pass the kitchen. He didn't want to see his mother- to see her face before he started his task. It would just make his task even harder. Just the image of her in his mind made his steps falter until they stopped.

"Itachi-chan?" She was right behind him; he could feel her worried eyes outlining his back. He had hoped she wouldn't see him. "I thought you said you had a migraine."

'I'm feeling better,' was on the tip of his tongue- but he couldn't say it. To say so would be a dead giveaway- migraines didn't go away so fast. What to say, what to say…

"Shisui just stopped by my window to tell me that the Hokage has requested me," Itachi heard him say calmly.

Her forehead was creased in worry. It was always creased nowadays, he vaguely remembered now. She was constantly worried about things- mostly him, he thought absentmindedly. "But you don't look so well." She walked the few feet between them and forced him to turn around with that stubborn streak she'd given him. As her hand pressed firmly against his forehead, Itachi recalled his childhood. It was because of her that his life had been relatively normal for something that had been so twisted.

"You don't feel really hot, but you're still really pale," Mikoto murmured thoughtfully. "Can't you tell the Hokage to send someone else? You've been on too many missions lately- you need your rest before you stress out and do something irrational."

He jerked away.

"Do you hurt?" Her concern wasn't infectious- just severely misplaced, Itachi told himself. She didn't know what would come to be. She didn't, and if she did, she'd be using the skills she had gained as a jounin in her youth to separate her eldest son's head from his body.

His head twitched almost imperceptibly. "I'm fine, Okaa-san."

Her hands were on his hips and her eyes- just like his but more full of life- looked stubborn and exasperated. "You need to take a rest, Itachi-chan. It's not healthy, you running around all of the time doing missions. I know you signed up for that, but still- you are _thirteen_. You should be able to make _friends_. Be a teenager, just like other boys your age. You can slow down without stopping, you know?"

But then she sighed, and relents. "Fine. Go. But when you get back, no missions for two weeks. You need to spend more time with Shisui-kun and Hana-chan, not always going on missions for ANBU." Itachi tried to look away- because this meant _lying_ and he didn't lie to his mother- but she was having none of it. "Promise me."

"Okaa-san…"

"Promise! I'm not asking you to go kill someone- just take two weeks off. Promise?"

His lips twitched in spite of his brain's order for them to stay still as he relented. "Fine, Okaa-san."

"Now go and finish your mission so you can come back home and _rest_." Now his mother was shooing him away. Giving a sigh, he left the house and made his way to the other side of the compound, where he'd begin the massacre.

Maybe he was going about this the wrong way, Itachi thought. Perhaps instead of starting with someone easy- someone he had next to no emotional ties to, he'd start with the hardest person. Get it over with. Rid himself of the pain of the dread and waiting. Waiting to kill his mother was making his insides complete acrobatic twists that should be anatomically impossible. He felt bile make its way up his throat, but he forced it down in a swallow.

"Itachi."

The cold voice was unmistakable, the man who was the other part of his plan. If Konoha had known that this man was involved in their previous plan, they'd have called it off before they'd even began to plan. Madara Uchiha was _not_ someone they wanted to accommodate- not after his involvement in the founding of the village.

It would be so easy to use that, to stop the plans in its tracks…

"Madara-san." His tone was respectful, if a little tense.

"Are you ready to bathe the streets in blood?" The cruelty- the _delight_ in his statement- made Itachi want to grit his teeth. This man was excited in his statement, something that seemed to the young teenager, unusual in a human being. It did lend credit to his theory that Madara was a demon among men.

It didn't hurt that everyone thought him to be dead.

"I'm ready to complete this mission, yes."

Even as he walked over a hole in the concrete, Madara gave him a look- the equivalent of a teenager rolling their eyes. "This isn't a mission so much as a life change. It'll never be the same after the first strike- after the first head rolls. You'll have no choice but to continue.

"I promise- you'll enjoy it after the first sight of blood. These people are just holding the world back- criminals, in their own rights. Enjoy cleaning up the world of such miscreants. They aren't your family- remember how they used you time and again for their own gain? Remember how they _fear_ you? They hate you, for being _special_, for being so great at killing. They're jealous. Let the righteousness bring them down. They deserve no pity." Again, Itachi noted how the delight seemed severely misplaced in this scenario as their silent footsteps reached the first house.

None of this is for him, he realized. The elder Uchiha was talking about himself- this wasn't about Itachi Uchiha or for his benefit.

This was just revenge and madness.

Through the window, Itachi could see a young boy in the kitchen, his chubby fists around the red crayon and his eyes fixated on the marks on his paper. Crayons of many colors- iceberg lettuce green, fuchsia, onyx black, sunrise orange- surrounded him. A young woman- a mother- knelt by his chair, talking to him softly. He could read her lips

("What are you drawing, Sato?"

"A _ninja_."

"Why are you drawing a ninja?"

"He has a lot of weapons. Why does he have so many weapons?"

"So he can save his mommy from the bad guys.")

as she watched him with a look in her eyes not much different than the look his mother gave him- when he was younger and when she brushed his hair away from his forehead so she could check his temperature.

A cold feeling settled in the general area of his large intestine and he tried not to choke again.

He couldn't do this. Looking at his hands, he tried to imagine them gouging holes in his kinsmen- tried to imagine loping Sato's head from his neck- tried to imagine them trembling.

"Itachi, are you waiting for an invitation?" His ancestor's tone was pleasant, just as Itachi imagined it'd sound if he were inquiring as to what the weather would be like tomorrow (dark, with no chance of clear skies). Their weapons were out and he didn't remember pulling his katana from its sheath.

He tried to nod, but his mind was full of his mother, her blood, his sword five inches past her back and buried hilt-deep, her screams getting stuck on the bleeding in her throat, her eyes going dim, her apron from cooking stained the red that was more fitting painted on her lips…

He couldn't do it. It didn't matter if he was starting with her or ending with her. No matter how he cut it, she would die if he started tearing people apart. Why did it matter who he started with, when it would only end with her? She was in the mess any way he diced it and…

_He couldn't do it_.

With the silent hiss of steel on leather, Itachi stuck the sword back into its place on his back. His eyes found the nearly invisible scrapes on the window, from where someone- a young boy, probably- had scraped the ends of chopsticks until the lines were imbedded in the glass forever, and traced them in their messy surrender. They were clear- Sharingan clear, and he didn't remember turning them on.

"No one is dying tonight," he murmured softly and turned away from the window to look Madara in the face. He did remember this emotional turmoil in his belly, and it only quieted with this decision. The resolution is warmer than blood on his hands and he felt the tension leave him. The choice- the contemplation- had steadied him as he found himself in front of a silent Fury, like from legend.

"What?" It came out quiet and the tension returned with it.

But he stiffened his spine and stared right into eyes that are older than his own- that have seen things that would make him claw at his eyes and tear them out at the very root. His hands had done things that would make Itachi never want human contact ever again.

"No one shall die tonight," Itachi hissed, narrowing his eyes. "Leave without shedding any blood and I will not tell the counsel that you are alive. But if you don't…" The unfinished threat was enough of a promise. He may be entirely too powerful for any one person's good, but even he wouldn't be able to deal with the united force of Konoha and the Uchiha's, neither of which were his ally. Madara wasn't a fool, and they both knew it.

But Madara was not finished, and they both knew that too.

"I'll be back."

"I know." Itachi hoped he looked as fearless as he thought. The thought of this not being over bothered him- the uncertainty of what could happen tomorrow- the day after tomorrow- the years after tonight- made him dread going to sleep and waking up.

But he was getting ahead of himself, thinking of waking up when he hadn't even gone to sleep yet.

Madara melted into the darkness, piece at a time until his eyes were last. Luminescent Eternal Sharingans were on him, a mad grin into the very last second he had.

"_Wait for me_," were his last words, purred like Satan's own helper. "_You will regret this, and I'll be glad to watch you fall when it does_."

Reaching with all of his senses, Itachi waited until he couldn't feel any more of the dark chakra in the area before he relaxed again. That had been way too easy. He knew it was, but he also knew it was over- for a moment or so- enough time, in his opinion.

He started for home, feeling his heart slow almost to its resting pace. Perhaps it was like this for all near misses, but Itachi noticed things about his home that he hadn't noticed before. For instance, the way the tree branches fell on the wall in _just_ the right way to allow for creative genjutsu contouring for those with the skill. Then there was the Teyaki-san and Uruchi-san's senbei shop- he remembered them giving him then when he was younger and how he'd appreciate the small glances that didn't size him up because of who he was. He saw the way the houses were close together, as if they were trying to help shield each other from any invaders.

And all of this was almost _gone_.

The thought stunned him into mental quietness as he tried to remember why he'd almost gone through with it. Why had he tried to end all of this?

But it came back to him- for _peace_. He knew of his clan's planning- their machinations to get what they felt they richly deserved in a village that laid their achievements bare and unremarkable. The coup d'état they had tried to create to become the leaders they thought they should _be_. The blood would be shed, and he tried to imagine the blood of children- the children his brother went to class with-.

No.

He pushed that out of his mind. Tomorrow, he would come up with a plan. He'd think of how he could manipulate this situation away; how he'd explain why his clan woke up in the morning to the council of elders and the Sandaime.

But until then…

Itachi found himself on the doorstep of his home and opened the door to the smell of his mother's tempura. "Sasuke-chan, is that you? Come help your mother with dinner."

Silently, he just walked into the kitchen and started setting the table, where his father was sitting, quietly watching half of his family doing the normal family activities.

"Itachi-chan! Didn't you have a mission?" Her voice was surprised but delighted, and Itachi found himself happy to not be on any mission at all.

"Hokage-sama only needed a clarification of my last report," Itachi said quietly as he set the last plate down.

"That's nice. I'm glad you're home."

"Hm," was the only thing his father said, but it sounded like he wasn't _un_happy that his eldest son was home for dinner.

When it came to Fugaku, Itachi wasn't sure about his role in the need for a massacre or simply his role as a father. Unlike his mother, his father was emotionally distant and a problem. Perhaps if his father hadn't been strung along with the rest of the elders, he could tolerate the push to do his "duty" as the heir, but his father's position in this game between the Uchiha and the rest of Konoha left his son in a precarious situation at best.

But he merely inclined his head and was glad when Sasuke rushed into the room, having thrown his bag at the door in his rush to sit down and eat. "Aniki, you are home!"

"Yes, your older brother's home. He's going to be around for two weeks." His mother's voice was firm, but there was a soft delighted undertone that didn't fail to make Itachi wish he could do something to show that he was content being home as well.

Itachi didn't need to look up from serving himself a shrimp tempura to know his father had raised an eyebrow at this piece of information, but before his father could say something that would make him want to rub his nose in a loose sense of frustration, Sasuke butt in.

"Does that mean you will have time to help me work on my Katon?"

He was pretty sure the corner of his mouth twitched at the request, but he let himself take a small bite of his dinner first. He subtly looked over the table- at this strange piece of ordinary that rarely showed itself- and tried to take a mental picture. This was why everyone was still here- why he'd decided to make this stand.

The tempura went down his throat easily and he dabbed daintily at the corner of his mouth. "When are you done with school?" he asked nonchalantly.

Sasuke gave a small cheer before almost tackling him sideways.

"Sasuke! Didn't we teach you not to interrupt your brother while he's eating?"

"Yes, Kaa-san." But Sasuke didn't sound particularly repentant as he gazed at his elder brother in no small amount of glee.

"_You will regret this_…"

A chill spilled over his spine at the memory of those words, but Itachi focused on his family- the occasional instances of normalcy they inserted in his life, the- well, it could be called love- love they allowed him that took away the sting of every kill, the reasons they gave him to end the life of others.

Regretting their lives would be the last thing he would ever do.

* * *

Well, I'd like to end chapter one by saying welcome to "A Thousand Times Over". It's... well, I know it's going to be a doozy to write, but I hope it'll be a worthwhile endeavor. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I will enjoy writing it because this is something I've been plotting in different incarnations for about a year now. It's not something I've personally read before, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Second of all, as you may have noticed, the massacre does not occur. thus a lot of things are different from canon!verse. Shisui is not dead. Itachi didn't commit the massacre. He sent Madara packing- temporarily. That being said, this is non-massacre, but as you will see in the next chapter, this isn't the traditional non-massacre.

Also, I'm not sure how often I'll be able to update. Those who know me know that I'm a busy college student- full credit load & volunteering on the side- so time to write doesn't come to write very often. But I'm ready to undertake this; I just ask for some patience & understanding.

Hope you're ready for this roller coaster. :)

P.S. Thank you, selene, for giving me the motivation to finish this whole thing. Srsly- you are a _doll_. Love ya. ;D


	2. Infiltration

**disclaimer**: i do not own Naruto.  
**dedication**: to my family- Saraa, Emily, & les- for being their amazing selves; to selene, for once again talking me through some plot details; to jenny, briony, & les for telling me to keep with this idea even if i don't think i have the inspirational endurance for anything longer than a oneshot; to all of you reviewers, who told me i was doing something right. here's to all of the people trying to make a change in the world. don't be anything less than pure dead brilliant.  
**betareaders**: "thank you"s go out to les, selene, & jenny for reading through this chapter. your inputs always gave me something to improve on, & there would have been a LOT more errors in this if it had not been for you all. so thank you. :)  
**notes**: this was previously known as "You Me At Eight".

* * *

**Chapter One: Infiltration**

_"The happiest business in all the world is that of making friends & no investment on the street pays larger dividends; for life is more than stocks and bonds, and love than rate percent; & he who gives in friendship's name shall reap what he has._"

* * *

_Present time  
_**Konoha**

An empty echo penetrated the bathroom's usual clear-aired ambience as her heels clicked on its ceramic tiles.

Biting the inside of her cheek in consideration, she stood in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. The young woman critically examined her own appearance- her hair, her eyes, her clothes- for any flaw that would stand out like a sore thumb. Like a general looking over her troops, she was harsh and precise to a fault.

Nothing could be out of place. Nothing would be accepted short of perfection.

Sakura gave herself a self-satisfied nod. This disguise was more than a little irritating, but that couldn't be helped. As bothersome as they were, she had placed contacts in her eyes with care, clouding them from a bright green to a shade closer to a deep brown. One of her associates from her years outside the village had made them for her- a special order, which meant she'd had to wait a few extra days to get them before she could start the process of re-assimilating into her old village. Few people went through so much trouble for colored contacts, as their ability to disguise was not required for most common folk. Those who _did_ need them for such a purpose had adequate skills to just settle a simple genjutsu over themselves. There was also the fact the contacts didn't function perfectly. For one, colored contacts were a new product, one that was still in the beginning stages of testing. For another, she had no need for them, and so they had felt odd and unnecessary at first. Her vision seemed slightly blurred, seeing the world through colored plastic, but she had practiced her techniques with them in until they had no effect on her aim with a kunai, shuriken, or fist.

"Troublesome," she grumbled. The skill of her enemies with genjutsu put a damper on her own significant talent for it. If only she could cast one over herself without giving herself away! But no, it would only serve to alert them- and it was too early to let them know of the cuckoo in their nest. And so she had to put forth a lot of work just to slip through the enemy's fingers.

But then she looked at her hair and promptly threw a fit. "_Dammit_!"

To anyone else, she would look nothing short of normal- a girl of eighteen years, about to leave for her first day of work. Her hair was tidily swept back into a plaited dark snake winding halfway down her back.

However, any attention paid to her hair, and it would be more obvious than the nose on her face that her roots were most certainly _pink_.

The odd mutation in her genes was _such_ a pain.

But let it not be said that she let such a small thing like her roots growing in stop her from accomplishing what needed to be done. Never let it be said that such a minor cosmetic issue would get in her way. This was for her special people- for herself, really- and nothing was going to stand in her way.

Now, where had she put the extra black hair dye…

Muttering to herself vehemently, Sakura started throwing open all of the drawers she could find. The medicine cabinet, the little drawers under the sink, the closet in the hall, the secret compartment under the bench… She tried to withhold unnecessary violence- after all, she had just moved into the apartment five days before after her successful interview with the head of the hospital, and it would not do to wreck it now.

When she found her supply of unopened hair dye, she was tempted to dip into it. To hell with _waste_! She was going to be _late_ for her _first day of work_, which was not acceptable in the least. Good first impressions were hard to come by and were so crucial on a daily basis.

But when it came to life and death, it became _necessary_…

She shook her head out and glanced around the room one more time, in the hope that, maybe, just _maybe_, the bottle of dye she'd used a week ago was sitting on the edge of her tub- some place she had missed in her haphazard search for it. Sakura pulled out a new box with a sigh and slid a fingernail under its flap, dumping its contents in the sink.

So much for timely first impressions.

Half an hour later, Sakura found herself dashing through her front door, barely sparing enough time to lock the door behind her. Almost no one was out at the moment, which was hardly surprising, seeing as it wasn't even six o'clock in the morning. The sun wasn't even over the horizon yet and slow mist crawled upon the ground, leaving dew on individual blades of grass. In the faint distance, a cat could be seen, slinking between the fence posts, while there was a minor disruption in the form of an early morning wake-up for a student of the academy on the other side of Konoha.

It was pleasant.

But Sakura Haruno hardly had the _time_ to indulge in such pleasantries. She was _late_!

Her breath hissed through her teeth as she held onto the straps of her bag, speed-walking past the marketplace. It was off to a slow start with barely anyone browsing the neat stalls, she noted absentmindedly as she breezed by. A few shadowy figures were poking around, but most of them seemed to be minding their own shop.

"Hey! Hey you!"

She ignored the voice suddenly calling behind her, its loud and obnoxious tones bypassing the vocal recognition region of her brain completely. It was habit now, after years spent with one of the most irritatingly talkative people mankind could create naturally.

"Girlie! I'm talkin' to you!"

Her back stiffened slightly at that. She _hated_ being called- whatever. Moving on. Keep moving. _Legs, why aren't you moving? _It's called being _late_.

By the time her legs received the message from her brain, there was an entirely unwelcome hand gripping her wrist rather loosely. It made her shiver on the inside before every rational part of her brain shut down. Instinct was suddenly driving everything, and so Sakura's hand, fueled with chakra, struck out at the obvious weak point of the opposing human body- the neck. So many chakra points she could touch on complete accident, assuming her hand missed out on severing the area between the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae.

A head would _roll_. Quite literally, as a matter of fact. And she would've regretted it, of course, killing someone before she'd even gone undercover. She could always hide the body, to be sure, but someone would miss him- whoever _he_ was. Bonds and a dead body would leave some sort of trail, making her job even harder.

But then there was this yelp and her assailant was abruptly ten paces left of his original position. His facial expression looked- he looked like he couldn't believe what she had just tried to do. His face- a strong nose and open friendly eyes not far off the color of coal- looked so familiar, bordering on her wondering if they'd met before. It was more likely that she had seen his photo mixed in with the ones of the opposition Kakashi-sensei and Tsunade-shishou had her look at and memorize. A lot of good that did her.

"You just- you almost _killed_ me! You don't even _know_ me."

She tried to cut across him with an "I'm sorry," but he was having none of it. His dark hair was all ruffled as he talked and ran his fingers through it as he kept _going_ on and on and _on_.

"That is so rude, I hope you know. Didn't your mother ever teach you that you should at least introduce yourself before you nearly decapitate someone who was trying to catch your attention? Honestly, people nowadays. How-."

He was rambling and she was… she was _impatient_. She was _late_. He was making her even _later_ with his whole drama queen behavior. Completely unacceptable.

"Excuse me." Her voice was soft and polite even as her index finger itched to send him flying into next weekend. This sorry excuse for a person was shortening her temper until it was just a tiny stub about to be lit on fire. "I'm sorry about that- I really am, but it's kind of rude to touch someone. You're lucky your mouth is still able to move. Go appreciate being alive and… be verbose elsewhere? Now, I'm about to be late, so would you please?"

Sakura stared pointedly at where the man's hand was still wrapped around her wrist.

He let go of her with a strange absence of words, for which she was thankful as she continued on.

She was less thankful, however, when he started walking alongside her.

"Stop _following_ me," Sakura snapped, speeding up substantially in her haste to get away. What a _creep_. She had a plan and rebellion to put into action and all of that _hinged_ on her getting to her first day of work on time.

"No."

"And why _not_?" She nearly snarled at him, but he kept up with her any way, looking more pleased with himself than scared. It didn't look like he was tiring, and it wasn't as if she was going slowly. This was the kind of pace she could only keep up for short distances; the only person she knew with the reserves of chakra to keep up with this was Naruto and she _knew_ that that wasn't exactly something you just find on the side of the road.

"Because I think the very least that you could do for nearly ending my life is buy me breakfast," he replied as if it were completely logical.

She stopped moving.

He skidded, ending up a few feet in front of her at the end of the small trenches his feet created. Turning back to look at her, the mystery man asked, "What?"

Her hands were on her hips before she knew it and her feet were _tapping_ as she glared at this insufferable jerk. "What part of 'late' do you not understand? I don't have time to buy you breakfast, and I don't think I would if I did."

Sakura watched his eyes trail down the simple black skirt and white blouse she wore. The blouse hung a little looser around her slight frame than she would have liked, but a few strategically placed pins had solved that easily. The skirt was of an appropriate length and fit, allowing her legs free movement. It wasn't any cause for preening, but she was on a _mission_, not a _beauty pageant_. She suspected the look was standard for all doctors at the hospital, something that would only make her goal of fitting in that much easier.

"You're already late," he observed slowly.

"So?"

"It can't hurt to be any later, so you might as well spare five minutes to buy me breakfast. Be a good doctor and feed the innocent people."

Her hands flew into the air. "_Innocent_? _You_? You _assaulted_ me."

"Because you were ignoring me!" He said defensively. "And I didn't _assault_ you- I just… calmly made you stop moving so I could introduce myself."

"And we saw how well _that_ went." Sakura raised a dark eyebrow before continuing on her way. But she wasn't rushing anymore. She was already late, after all, and he was right- a few more minutes wouldn't hurt since apparently the only way to get rid of this person of not-interest was a meal. She ignored the logic that feeding one parasite would be like inviting a whole host of them for a meal- surely someone like this wouldn't have any _friends_. Firmly, she told herself that it was for pity- it wasn't because he reminded her of some of her friends from outside the village walls or because she was lonely. No, it was because resistance was futile, and maybe this man could be a source of information. Yes, that was it.

"Because you tried to kill me. What kind of person just _introduces_ him or herself to the person who just tried to kill them? That's like me asking you to look my name and address up in the village directory so you can come and finish me off in my sleep! I'm not _stupid_."

This was going nowhere. Absolutely _nowhere_. Running her fingers through her hair, she decided to change the subject. "Why would you bother introducing yourself to someone you don't know?"

He rolled his eyes at her. "It's not like I need any more reason to get to know a pretty new girl."

Sakura felt her mouth twitch slightly in response, even though she tried to stay as stony-faced as possible. She knew he had seen, though, when he gave her a smirk (a somewhat _familiar_ smirk- one that she'd seen years ago, when she had first graduated from the ninja academy she was passing just then).

He thrust his hand out at her in greeting, making her stop in her tracks to avoid getting a hand through her large intestine. "Anyway, I'm Shisui."

Looking up at him suspiciously, Sakura put her hand in his and shook it firmly. There were calluses on his palm- the kind of calluses that came with the repetitive grip of kunai and shuriken. Considering how much time she'd spent healing the people in her camp back in Suna, she couldn't help but recognize this… Shisui could be nothing other than a ninja.

The first one she'd met from the opposite side of this secret war.

The war they didn't even know they'd entered quite yet.

It was quite possible that he wasn't really on the other side, but she firmly told herself to harden her heart. Assuming him to be against her and her cause was safer than being optimistic and thinking him to be with her only to cut her down. This, though, meant changing who she was, and she knew it. Sakura had known when she'd accepted this mission five years ago, when she'd first said, "Yes," to Kakashi-sensei asking her to leave Konoha after the coup. She knew that she couldn't just smile anymore- there had to be a reason- a _purpose_. Believing in people was a sham- their lies were mental genjutsu. They played with your head and made you believe in illusions.

And then they killed you.

She wasn't ready to die.

So Sakura put on her best fake smile and said, "Hi, I'm Midori Yamamoto."

"Now that wasn't so hard, was it?" he asked as they continued walking towards the hospital at a pace that was a little more than leisurely. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw the wind tangle itself in his dark locks and the way he nearly closed his eyes at the feeling like a satisfied cat.

"Stranger danger, Shisui-san," Sakura said, with a raised eyebrow. "You can never be too careful. Enemies can be anywhere. It doesn't hurt to ask questions later if being open leaves you in danger of some sort of attack, you know?"

He turned his head towards her and mimicked her expression, looking quite smug and self-satisfied. "You are one of those conspiracy theorists, aren't you? Paranoid, thinking that Scotty is going to beam you up at any time of day you are alone? Haven't you heard the news? Strangers are simply friends you haven't made yet."

They hadn't warned her of this, Sakura thought with a tiny hint of exasperation. No one had thought to warn her that Konoha shinobi were like houses with no locks on the doors. Were they really this secure in their village? Were they this trusting or this naïve because they believed in their own strength or because they thought no one would wish them harm?

To her relief, the hospital was just up ahead when they turned the corner. She didn't really know how much more of Shisui she could stand. Gracing him with a small real smile, she said, "No, just cautious."

He scoffed. "Paranoia is not the same as caution, you know. Paranoia signifies that someone has something to hide- something they don't want everyone else to know. Do you have something to hide, Midori-chan?" His voice was light and his mouth still smiled, but Sakura swore her spine fairly shivered.

But this sounded like a game he didn't expect her to play, if she paid attention to his lazy grin. Sakura Haruno- and Midori Yamamato, by extension- were not afraid of playing along. "We all have something to hide, Shisui-san," she mused. She was living a lie and so every word that came out of her mouth was a lie. None of this was real, but in this, she was being completely honest.

As if her mentor was right there with her, Sakura heard Tsunade-shishou whisper in her mind, "In every lie you tell, there must be a kernel of truth. It'll help you tell it more believably _and_ it'll be easier to remember. Because…

"_You must never forget a lie you tell._"

"That's very true." Looking up at the cloudy sky, the young man looked rather thoughtful. For a second, they both stopped walking and stood in a comfortable silence, watching the sun slowly begin its journey across the heavens as it dyed the clouds shades of orange, pink, and gold.

She was still for the first time in a while, and it was a strange feeling. There was this twitch within her, screaming for her to move- that there was something to do. There was always something to do, and she should be tired…

But she was late. _Late_.

"Aren't you late?" Turning to look at Shisui, she blinked before stiffening her shoulders and nodding tersely. Their steps fell into a mismatched pace as each of his required Sakura to take two. Her legs felt a little sore from all of the fast paced walking as well as her unpacking most of her possessions the night before, so she reinforced the muscles with just enough chakra to ease the soreness as well as acting as a form of anesthesia. There were some side effects that she had to keep in mind- such as overextending the muscles even if she couldn't feel it- but she felt that the chances of such a thing happening on her first day was quite unlikely.

They were almost at the hospital, a grey building whose walls were so clean they bordered on white. The flowers underneath the first floor windows lent a well-kept air to the building in an array of red and white blossoms. There was a tender care when it came to the manicured lawn, stripes appearing where a lawn mower had gone over it with the utmost care and no grass growing between the cracks or encroaching on the pavement.

Even if she'd been there the week before for the interview, she was still struck at how it was a different building than the one she'd laid in, near death's door a little over five years ago. She might've been half delirious from pain, but Sakura couldn't help but think that there had been so much _less_ red and white here back then. There'd been the green sign over the front entrance; the roof- because there _had_ been a roof back then, instead of the flat finish to the top of the building- had been blue.

Yet there still was this… feeling. It was something inexplicable, this sudden oppression that weighed on her. Her lungs felt like they'd collapsed within her chest and she wished she had the freedom to gasp for breath. There was the possibility that the stress had finally broken her; after years of preparing for this opportunity to infiltrate one of the enemy's most important buildings, it had hit her.

It was because this… this was _it_. The culmination of all of the blood, sweat, and tears she had shed and spread. The end-all-be-all each crack she had struck in the earth- the bones broken that she had melded together with her chakra control. Every night she had woken up with cramps in her legs from running miles on end because "you may need to flee- and you will bet that, if they do figure out you're a spy, they'll send their swiftest shinobi- you've heard of one of _them_, haven't you? The one who is known as the one who mastered the Body Flicker? If they even _think_ that you're making a run for it, he'll catch up to you before your heart beats _once_." All of the memorization- all of the pain of looking through photo albums to remember _why_ she was doing this…

It was for this.

She was aware that Shisui was casting her a worried glance, so Sakura gave him a brief look before calmly striding through the sliding glass doors of the hospital into an unusual quiet. Her feet carried themselves and the rest of her into white and the smell of over-cleaned _death_, and it almost made her reel. But that was before she picked up the pieces of her painfully healing soul and firmly held it together.

"_There is a purpose_," she thought with all of her resolve.

"What was that?"

… Perhaps with too much resolve.

"Eh?" Sakura feigned ignorance and confusion, but considering the dubious look she received in return, she didn't think Shisui accepted that answer.

Fortunately, she was saved from having to explain by their arrival at the front desk, where an almost familiar person looking up from the paperwork.

Kumadori. Twenty-three years old. Research medic-nin. A veritable genius with a microscope, she'd been the one to discover the reason for the Sharingan causing blindness- the lack of complete control of chakra circulating around the optic nerves burning the chakra pathways to the optic nerve- among other things.

Stats and meaningless facts bled into one another until they were just words running through her head next to the mental profile she'd constructed, so Sakura just smiled at the dark-haired woman and bowed. "Hello, I'm Midori Yamamato. I was supposed to start work today, but my luck seemed to be lacking. I'm sorry for being so late."

It was curious, that someone of such renown would be delegated receptionist duties, but when Sakura looked closer, she recognized the slight pinkness in the dark eyes as conjunctivitis. Hardly something anyone would be doing research with.

Grabbing the clipboard, Kumadori ran her finger down the list till she stopped at what Sakura assumed to be her false name. "Yes, Yamamato-san. You seem to have a list of cases to take care of today. Mogusa said to remind you that you will be expected to take up any emergency cases that come up since we seem to be short on medical staff today."

Sakura grabbed the clipboard as it was handed to her. "Where should I put my things and change?" she asked politely. Shisui was still standing next to her and she couldn't help wondering why he was still there- he should know that he wasn't going to get any breakfast out of her today considering how busy she'd be with her job. Kumadori was giving him a strange look- something that was a mess of pity and exasperation, leaving Sakura nothing short of suspicious. What was going on?

"The lockers are in module B, in room 10. Just down that hallway to your left- the third door on the right," the researcher recited as she turns back to her papers. A clear sign of dismissal.

Sakura turned towards the specified hallway, shifting her bag to sit more comfortably on her back. She felt Shisui attempt to go with her, but before he can do so, Kumadori called after him.

"Shisui… can I talk to you for a moment?"

It wasn't really a question, Sakura thought, and apparently figured the same. With a mumble, he remained behind as she went to change.

Unsurprisingly, the lockers were alternating red and white down. Their name tags were a glinting gold near the top of the individual lockers, and she walked down the wall until she found hers. Pulling it open, Sakura reached for the lab coat that had been designated to her locker. It was bright white in a box of red- red not too dissimilar from the blood she washed from her hands every time after she'd heal wounds after spars- so white that there was no way it had ever been used before. She pulled it on, watching as it fell just a bit past her knees, and couldn't help but relax.

She'd made it this far without any [major] hiccups.

Now, she just had to make it through her first patient…

After she stuffed her bag in her locker, she walked out the door and nearly ran into Shisui, who was leaning on the wall. "Hey."

Sakura tried skirting him and making her way down the hall, flipping open the clipboard with the file of her first patient of the day attached. "Shouldn't you be doing something? A mission, or something?"

"It's my day off."

"Then isn't there something you could be doing instead of following me around like a lost puppy?" she teased. She couldn't help but settle into her role as a doctor, professional and at ease. It had something to do with the hospital, she suspected, the way the smell of antiseptic and the constant charge of medical chakra in the air felt like her kind of normality, as sick and twisted as it may sound to feel at home with death and life together.

"I was wondering if I could ask you for a different favor." His voice was dead serious and Sakura wondered what she'd see in his face if she were to sneak a peek. It wasn't an unfamiliar tone; when she'd worked briefly at Suna's hospital to train, it became really familiar. The anthem of people with someone to lose and nothing to gain. This was something she'd never been good at.

It takes heartlessness to be able to say no to the kind of request that would mean someone's life, and that is the something you cannot train yourself into accepting.

"What is it?" Sakura sighed, but she knew from the way his eyes lit up when she looked at him that he recognized she wasn't as exasperated as her words sounded.

"I was wondering if you could look at someone for me."

The way the words came out of his mouth, she knew that this wasn't the first time he'd said them. They had that sound of repetition- that he'd tried this so many times that he'd given up on any hope of his request doing any good, but at the same time… he looked like he had courage to try for hope.

As much as she'd like to indulge him, Sakura couldn't help but feel wary. Who was this someone? Why was Shisui so obviously emotionally invested in their wellbeing? What was the chance of her being able to heal someone who was in a condition that did not make recovery a very likely result?

Most importantly…

What if this person was someone who would get in her way? Someone she would only regret trying to save?

Shisui seemed to see the hesitancy written across her face and he blanched, grabbing for her hand. She just managed to not shy away from him and watched as he held her hand in both of his. He not only towered over her, but his hands dwarfed her. The masochistic side of her wondered if he had the strength to crush her hands, but a gentle squeeze brought her mind back to the matter at hand, swaying in the black-blue seas that were his eyes.

She knew, even as the words left his mouth, that this wasn't the Shisui who had dramatically reacted to his near-death. This Shisui looked dead serious. "One of my best friends is really sick, even if he'd never admit it to anyone, stubborn bastard that he is. But he's _really important_- there's this really big family thing involving him, but… okay, that's not the reason why. You don't have to look at me like I'm… like I care about that kind of shit. Family politics and all that- I really don't, but…"

He dropped her hand and rubbed his face a little as he tried to find the right words. "He's my cousin, and my best friend. He needs help, and… could you at least look him over? That's all I ask."

Sakura rubbed the bridge of her nose. Looking at a patient… who wasn't officially a patient… She could think of a few rules- _laws_- that this request would violate. The Twenty-Fifth Konoha Statute, for one, and the fourth part of the Health Code, for another. There were certainly more reasons to say no…

But the Hippocratic Oath was the first of all codes, outranking every other one by a wide margin.

Sakura told herself that this was why she gave him a sympathetic look and nodded slowly. It wasn't a personal favor- it was because it was her _duty_. It was her duty to look over all people who were in need of her specialty. Her duty required her to help, regardless of affiliation.

He grinned, the brevity he gave off like a sun coming from behind the clouds and she could've sworn she was blinded. There was a small sound of paper hitting paper and Sakura found herself staring at a blue folder with a large "D329" scrawled in the upper right-hand corner on her clipboard.

"You stole the _file_?" she squeaked, disbelieving. Screw the Hippocratic Oath- she didn't want to get arrested!

He gave her a dramatic sigh. "No, Kumadori gave it to me. I'm insulted that you'd think of such a thing. For _that_, I think you owe me a week's worth of breakfast."

"No, I do not!"

"Friends do friends favors! And you just did a dis-service by assuming I'd do something illegal."

They walked up the stairs as they quarreled lightheartedly as to whether or not Shisui was, indeed, a moocher. On occasion, they would pass other people in lab coats. To Sakura's surprise, most of them were cautious and silent. Their heads would give a slight bob, but other than that, there seemed to be no reaction to her added presence to the hospital. They were not particularly social or friendly in the slightest, which was peculiar considering the hospital's reputation as a friendly institute with professional attitudes.

"What's up with the doctors here?" she asked as they reached the third floor and started down the hallway going to their right.

"What do you mean?" He seemed genuinely confused, his fingers running through his hair in thought.

"They're… they…" Sakura tried to find the words to describe their attitude- their cold behavior, the way they seemed to see her as some kind of enemy- before giving up. "Never mind."

Shisui seemed to accept that as he stopped by the last door in the hallway and knocked.

"Who is it?" The voice was undoubtedly male, Sakura absentmindedly noted as she was just about to open the file.

He grinned at the door before stuffing his hands in his pockets and settling on his heels comfortably. "Just… little old me. You know, your favorite cousin- the very reason you can stand waking up in the morning…"

"Shisui, stop with the ridicule and self-promotion. Your ego has been stoked enough by your foolish imagination." The words were delivered with the flattest tone that Sakura had heard since she had been a genin. In fact, it was so familiar that she couldn't help but be reminded of one of her teammates back when Team Seven had been faithful to Konoha…

Before her mind could settle into the wistful mode of nostalgia, a flicker of yellow appeared down the hall the patient's room was facing. If it hadn't been for the slam of one of the doors a hundred yards away, Sakura would've sworn that it was a figment of her imagination- that the yellow wasn't hair and that she hadn't seen blue eyes flash her way before looking forward again the split second before the person had disappeared.

But… it was impossible...

"Shisui-san-."

He waved her concerns off, though, and said, "But Itachi-chan! You don't say that to the person you love more than life itself."

Her protests stopped in shock.

"Shisui. Have you been at the sake again? Oji-san told you to stay away from it."

By this point, Sakura wouldn't have been surprised if someone had put a stethoscope to her chest and found out that her heart wasn't beating. For that matter, her breath seemed to have been knocked out of her lungs completely. An EKG would have found no vital signs whatsoever and set off enough beeping to wake the dead. She wanted to call for someone to perform CPR on her, if only to get away from the patient in room D329 and Shisui, who was _most certainly_ not who she had thought he was. It wasn't as if he had tried to deceive her, but she was trying to keep her composure, which was difficult when your patient was-.

Her thought process was quickly derailed as her self-proclaimed friend kicked the door open with a loud banging noise and said brightly, "Midori-chan, I'd like to introduce you to my cousin, Uchiha Itachi."

As blank eyes looked her over, Sakura was pretty sure she would give just about anything to get kicked in the carotid artery and die of internal hemorrhaging.

She had just spent the past half hour with the _nephew_ of the man she was supposed to be arranging a coup against, and now she was expected to solve the mystery illness of his heir.

All Sakura could think was that she had two words she wanted to tell Fate and they were definitely not "Bless you".

* * *

Surprise! I got this out... a lot faster than expected. Especially since I should've been studying for my Organic Chemistry & Russian midterm, but didn't (not just because of this, but because the political matters around here are getting interested & protesting is a lot more fun than it sounds, even if it's only waving signs & chanting & singing).

Anyway! I was blown away by the people who reviewed. You guys honestly made my day- my week, really. So I got this chapter out, & I hope it lived up to expectations. Obviously, the next chapter will have actual Itachi-Sakura interactions, which I'm really excited to get to.

I still have to plan things out as well as well as catch up on school, so I'm sorry to say that the next update _will_ be a while in coming. I am a busybusybusy college student whose obsession may be writing, but my somewhat-realistic dream is to be a doctor, so... studying. Ew. I'M SORRY TO PUTTING THAT DISGUSTING THING IN FRONT OF YA'LL ON MY PRIORITY LIST. But it must be so. Sad. Damn.

_And the tensions increase_!


	3. Evaluation

**disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto  
**dedication:** To selene for beta-ing; to jenny for beta-ing, laughing at my dreams, hounding/reminding me to write, & re-writing _The Notebook_'s ending with me; & to les & Saraa, not just because they're basically the family I wasn't given in person yet being there always & giving their support. I love you all. 3  
**notes:** Um, I have a lot of reasons for not writing & updating for... two months. I've been busy with classes (I actually should be studying for my Organic Chemistry exam since it is tomorrow, but I wrote instead. Happy? I hope so.) &... other crappy things. But this is up now, & I hope it was worth the wait. :)

* * *

**Chapter Two: Evaluation**

_"And even if you were in some prison, the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses - would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories?" -Rainer Maria Rilke _**  
**

* * *

There was a statue standing in front of the door to his hospital room.

Pale legs were tensed under the rippling fabric of black cloth as if they were unsure whether they should stay or go- leap or be paralyzed. The hands that gripped the clipboard with the sickeningly familiar blue folder seemed torn between ripping it to shreds and flipping through its pages, eyes following with hooded interest. All of this was apparent. Too round, too big eyes stared at him with something alternating between wanting blood to be shed and wiping it off with care. But everything about her was seemingly on pause- someone who was suffering from indecision.

Itachi had just met this woman- her nametag said she was a 'Midori Yamamoto'- and he already knew that she was a person of extremes, temperamental like a midsummer's day.

He glanced out the window while she examined him from her position outside of the room. It was a process repeated so many times that he no longer wondered if the new doctor's gaze was stripping off his hospital gown one strip at a time.

A storm was on its way in, Itachi thought dully. From his window, the clouds were almost grey, as if the rising sun had tinkered with their shades. Maybe there was something of a rainbow within a storm, but it must rain for a rainbow to appear.

Some rain must fall before a rainbow can appear.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, everything seemed to quiet within his mind. It would not be too far off to say it was like the storm growing outside his window- the birds stopped singing with the rush of the breeze and scattered in their own zephyr of colored feathers. Nothing could exist as his thoughts trailed off, leaving him with just memories.

After dinner that fateful night ten years ago, he had gone to his room and _paced_. His feet had lead him back and forth until his head spun with all of the things he could say- all of the explanations that had been truth but could be seen as nothing but lies, all of the things that would let him and his weakness off the hook. How could this be excused when war was settled on the doorstep and taking its time to knock and be let in?

Then there had been issue of Madara.

The oldest Uchiha was like his shadow- an infection that he could not get rid of. Perhaps he was gone, but Itachi had known that he would have to be inhumanly foolish to believe that the situation was anything but temporary. Madara was strong, and they both knew it. The only reason Itachi had succeeded in holding him off was the threat of his whole clan surrounding him and willing to take him down; for when the strongest is taken down, there is an influx of power granted to the rest. It had nothing to do with reputation, but _control_. Madara had never been the type to lay himself at the feet of anyone, even if it was the majority.

Explaining away two things- one of which the Sandaime and that so-called Council of Elders knew about and one they didn't and wouldn't be too pleased to be informed of- would be a suicide mission. So he had decided to leave Madara to his own devices for the moment until he could put together a suitable plan to deal with his great-great grandfather. He wasn't, after all, of immediate concern.

His clan, however…

He still needed to figure out how to explain why they were going to wake up in the morning.

Tossing and turning a few hours later, neither a solution nor sleep had come to him. The ceiling had been looking as stucco-ed as ever and all the young boy had wanted was the answer to come to him. Some way to escape this twisted fate.

He was still so _young_…

An uneasy slumber had overtaken him as Itachi dreamed of knives raining from the sky, something that tasted like blood, and houses set on fire. Everything smelled like burning coals and ash covered everything. Voices echoed in his head with words like, "_Sacrifices must be made for the greater good_." "_You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs_." "_Why did you take this mission? Did you _want _to kill your own mo-?"_

"Could you please sit up straight and take a deep breath?"

At the order, Itachi blinked out of gray memories and the confrontations they brought. He looked away from the window only to stare straight into serious yet inquisitive brown eyes. His nose nearly knocked into those of the new doctor when his head whipped around, but he stopped just short of continuing the motion too far. She didn't look particularly disconcerted, this Midori-san. After he'd been lost in his thoughts, she had evidently left her post by the door and wandered closer. Looking down, he was surprised to find that she had pulled his arms out of the hospital gown without his knowledge of it. Had he really been so lost in thought?

"Uchiha-san? Do I need to repeat the instructions?" Her voice was polite, not mocking, but he felt the tension behind them all the same. She didn't look particularly pleased at being asked to take care of him- but it wasn't ire so much as wary. Her face was not unlike the looks of the few people who saw him before he snuffed out their life, as they knew full well in the last few seconds of their life who their executioner was. At the same time, though, it wasn't a fear kind of wary so much as uneasy wary- as if she did not know what to expect.

… So nothing like those he'd been sent to assassinate.

Silently, he did as he was told and tried to take a deep breath, but a fit of coughing interrupted it. He had expected it, and apparently she had too. Her hand was on his chest in half a heartbeat, green with the medical chakra he'd come to expect in a hospital. Itachi waited for that familiar feeling of chakra intrusion and the frustrated look on his temporary caretaker's face as they tried to stop his lungs and diaphragm from the copious seizures they endured.

Instead, Yamamoto-san closed her eyes and concentrated, allowing her chakra to crawl through his body, not unlike snakes through underbrush and into various holes in the earth. They explored his body like it was their home, tapping into the alveoli, the muscle that made up his weak diaphragm, and burrowing into his bronchial tubes. Still, all they did was settle into his respiratory system like it was their home, not interfere with his coughing fit.

Sitting…

Watching…

Listening…

Feeling…

Observing…

The coughing grew steadily worse as it burned his throat quickly, each breath refusing to come without tugging at parts of his respiratory system. He was used to the blood that spilled from his mouth, but there was little he could do as his body shook even more with the force his body was tearing at itself with. Blood dripped from his fist and almost grazed the doctor's outstretched arm, but she didn't react in the slightest. Her head was bent low, her face absorbed in the information her chakra was taking in as she continued to spread her chakra through his body. His head was pounding with his heartbeat, as if there were a million drums and birds fighting it out in his brain.

All of those things might have been okay- his coughing might've stopped with no ill effects other than blood dripping out of the corner of his mouth, but a suddenly harsh episode of coughing swept him into a small world where nothing existed but the air rushing his lifeblood from within and expelling it for the rest of the world to keep. Itachi almost wondered what the inside of his body looked like- if it was gaping like it had been stabbed by multiple kunai- but coughing was all he was capable of.

At that moment, he couldn't help but lean forward amidst his harsh exhalations, coughing blood into Yamamoto-san's hair. He would have expected her to lean away, at the very least- what if what he had could infect other people through contact with bodily fluids? But it didn't seem to concern her; the stream of non-intrusive chakra was as steady as ever, probing ever so lightly into his body.

Eventually, the coughing came to a stuttering halt. "I apologize," he managed to choke out between ragged breaths as he tried to breathe after what had felt like an eternity without air. He couldn't help but lean away from her, resting his back on stainless white pillows. She pulled away without talking and walked away in the direction of the door, and all he could do was watch her steps as her heels clicked against tiles, his heart thudding against his rib cage as if he'd just run a marathon.

She was leaving.

Itachi told himself that he wasn't surprised- perhaps she had handled his case differently from every other doctor who had walked in on his case, but that didn't make a difference. She was still a doctor, and there was no reason for her to try to figure out what was wrong with him, his father or not, his clan or otherwise, when he was possibly putting at her health at risk because of his mysterious illness. But it didn't help that she was walking away. He wasn't getting better- this was why he berated his cou-.

"Here. You can wipe off your mouth."

Itachi blinked as she carelessly tossed a white towel in his direction, and he grabbed it with the reflexes he'd spent his whole childhood cultivating. Absentmindedly running it against his lips, he watched her grab his folder and open it as she settled in the chair next to his bed.

"Besides the obvious symptoms, what other problems have you been having?" Her eyes were fixed on him, as calm as ever even though there was blood in her hair. Itachi hesitated, considering reminding her of it, but decided not to. After all, it wasn't like she didn't realize that there was quickly drying red among the dark strands upon her head.

He blinked. "What have you noticed thus far?"

"Well, first of all," she started, as she looked at him. She didn't bother looking at the notes she had made in her clipboard; instead she seemed to be sizing him up- as if she was wondering how much she would- _could_- say. "You have hemoptysis- that is the blood that you were coughing up. Probably caused by some kind of hemorrhaging in your lungs, but where, exactly, the blood is coming from will have to be determined through detailed chakra scans of your body.

"I also noted that you seem to have gone through extreme weight loss- it shows in the way your muscles seem to have lost some of their toning. Most disturbing of them all is your heart. The walls of your heart are rather weak, and the organ as a whole is beating too hard just trying to provide blood to your extremities. My biggest concern with that is the fact that your heart will eventually give out unless you build up more muscle and gain some weight. The most obvious visual sign, though, came up when I was scanning your body earlier with chakra- I felt your ribs."

Yamamoto-san's eyes gazed right at him, and Itachi was not surprised to see in them an unfazed calm as she told him exactly what havoc was being wreaked within his own body- the chaos that no one could see, existing beneath the surface of his skin (_would she be surprised to find the chaos in his mind?_). Perhaps there should be some more horror in those brown eyes- some more emotion, and not the placidity only a doll could display- but she was doing her job. What was the importance of emotion, or lack thereof, as long as she did what she was supposed to?

It had hardly served _him_ well.

"Anything you could tell me besides what I've noted thus far, Uchiha-san?"

Itachi paused, his mind already running through all of the things that had happened, picking apart what was important, and what was trivial and happenstance. Colds and fevers were normal, as were the pain in his eyes from using the Mangekyou Sharingan. Every Uchiha who used theirs on a regular basis had them.

So what stood out? What was not as it should be?

"I've been a little… tired, lately," he admitted quietly. His eyes stared unwavering at his new doctor as he admitted to the one thing that he thought stood out. "Spars leave me drained, even if they're not particularly intense. My chakra reserves would be fine, but I have to tap into them so that I don't fall over."

Her eyes turned down, focusing on his folder as she started scribbling notes down. "How long are these spars and how long does it take for you to recover? Have you noticed fluctuations in your chakra?"

He considered it quietly, continuing to rest his back. "I don't remember the first time, but I do remember when it became really… pronounced. The spar was… perhaps two hours long. I used about half of my chakra reserves, but I had to use some of the chakra so I wouldn't collapse. It makes it a little difficult to judge if there's a change in my chakra reserves. Recovery took approximately an hour, but my heart rate would still be unusually fast."

"Mmm…" The medic-nin murmured as she continued to write things down.

For the first time in ten minutes. Itachi took stock of his surroundings. There was something missing. The scratch of a pen on paper had set up an uneven tempo that nothing stuck with. He could hear the slight hum of the respirators in the corner, and the inhalation of the ventilation system as it wheezed in… and out… and in… and stopped. His eyes were no longer focused on the stucco ceiling but instead on the presence by the doorway.

…

Or, perhaps, just the empty space.

"Where's Shisui?" he remarked, feeling vaguely puzzled.

"Decided that he would go find the bathroom." Her pen stopped its dancing across his file and she slowly looked up at him. The way her hair was escaping the plait allowed the strands to curl around her face. Even as Yamamoto-san's fingers hurriedly brushed it away, she nonchalantly asked, "So how many doctors have you seen for this?"

He blinked and considered opening his mouth before settling for a look of… inquiring confusion.

She huffed before flipping her braid over her shoulder. "I know there has been more than one person treating you and your unknown condition. The folder is considerably wrinkled, as if it has been flipped through too many times. Then there is the sheer amount of different handwriting and ink all over the pages. Many different diagnosis and prescriptions and prognoses… They range from tuberculosis to spontaneous combustion of your aorta to being cursed by your Uchiha blood. It seems like you've been through every doctor in this hospital."

"Something like that," he agreed calmly before pausing. This wasn't really something he ever liked bringing up for several reasons. "My cousin believes it is his duty to talk to every doctor in this hospital until he finds one that can name this disease and cure me of it."

Itachi didn't look at his doctor as he said that. It wasn't because he had something against being saved- his pride was not worth his life. He was thankful that Shisui saw him as someone worth saving- someone human who couldn't do everything on his own.

Too bad he knew he didn't deserve to be saved.

* * *

For a second, she stopped fiddling with her braid and just looked at her patient.

Sakura knew that, had Tsunade been here, she would've pointed out what an opportunity this was. Fugaku Uchiha's eldest son – the Hokage's _heir_ – was within her grasp, weak to her. None of these people knew that she was a double-sided coin – not only a wolf in sheep's clothing, but one who knew both healing and destruction. She could use her hands to cure his illness or further it along with just a swipe of chakra, and no one would know the difference.

Because he didn't need her help to die.

Her duty here was not to uphold the Hippocratic Oath she had sworn two years before; it was, instead, to betray it. But no matter what she knew was right – at least, by her moral code, the one she'd lived with – she still couldn't get rid of the clenching in her belly. Maybe there was no definite "right" and "wrong", but that didn't make deciding any easier. Sakura knew that, eventually, she would have to make this choice- life or death, him or them, her oath or the people she loved.

Because it wasn't like she could have both.

But it wasn't just _him_ – he was just one among many people she'd have to provide care to here. He was a representation of this issue, this fight.

(Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Kakashi and Naruto whispered, "_I thought we had taught you to put your special people and the mission ahead of everything else_.")

She was shaken out of her thought by Shisui's sudden return to the room. "Midori-chan, are you done examining him? Or are you planning on remodeling the hospital wall with that really dark glare of yours?"

Not telling him that her hands would get the job done much quicker than her eyes, Sakura smiled robotically and shook her head. "I need to take a blood test and see what that can tell me – white blood cell levels, toxin content, and other information that'll give me a hint at whether it's an infection, and if so, what kind." She kept the information to a minimal; most of it didn't make sense anyway, and she could see the way Shisui's eyes were starting to glaze over before zoning in on her again.

"It looks like you could take a blood sample from your head, to be honest," he teased lightly. "Shouldn't you clean it off?"

She briefly creased her eyebrows together, feeling the way the dried mess on her head shifted with the movement of her scalp. "It's probably contaminated, Shisui-san, but I was going to go wash my hair off after I was done collecting information from Uchiha-san."

Shisui, flinging propriety and standards away from his immediate area for not the first time – and, Sakura suspected, far from the last – said, "So _formal_, Midori-chan! So formal, it's rather sad. I am _Shisui_; this is Itachi-chan. Come on- it's easy! Just _say our names_-."

From the bed, Itachi said softly, and not a little stiffly, "She can call me whatever she wishes."

"- and everyone can be happy." He ignored his cousin.

She couldn't help it; she rolled her eyes before grabbing the butterfly needle, tourniquet, cotton ball, an alcohol wipe, and a tube.

Time to shed some blood.

In a way, Sakura thought, he was an unnatural kind of still as his red blood flowed through the needle and collected in the tube. He didn't tense at the feeling of cold metal embedded in pale translucent skin or the way she shifted the rotatable chair slightly to relieve the slight discomfort from holding her body in the wrong position.

"Shisui-san, do not touch that unless you want it to go down your throat and breathe through a tube for the rest of your life," she remarked calmly as she kept her eye on the tube collecting blood.

If it wasn't for Shisui's chatter and the sounds of him investigating the ward from behind her, Sakura suspected that it would be quiet to the point of near self-suffocation. Itachi's eyes, regardless of whether he intended them to be that way or not, were deep and intense. Even without his Sharingan activated, there was power there that threatened to push her sanity away.

She didn't know what she had expected from Uchiha Itachi, but she was pretty sure it hadn't been this… man who looked almost skeletal, though there was enough muscle to just make him look lean. He almost looked beautiful, but she remembered distinctly that, as an Uchiha, that went without saying. They were all dark hair and a pallor that would make a phantom envious, cheekbones creating the only color in their face through shadows. Sakura remembered Sasuke had been the same way, his Sharingan whirling in the Forest of Death…

She looked down.

"Is the tourniquet too tight?"

"No."

"Okay then," she murmured, sliding the needle out swiftly and with precision. Capping the tube, Sakura stood up with a detached smile. "I'll be back in a few seconds; I just have to drop this off at the lab so they can run the tests. Shisui-san, I would appreciate if you did not touch everything; some of it is actually clean, and I'm sure the hospital administration would prefer that the rooms remained uncontaminated. Itachi-san, try not to move too much. If you feel like a coughing fit is coming, tell Shisui-san. He should know where the tissues are." She decided not to add, '_Since he can't keep his hands to himself_.'

Before either could say anything, Sakura left the room. Behind her, she heard Shisui complain, "Why am I supposed to be your wet nurse?"

"It's your own fault, Shisui." Itachi's voice was faint, but not quite blank as there was a small hint of amusement. "You're the one who brought her here to help me. What's wrong with you doing this minor thing?"

Snorting, she found herself in the gloomy white hall that she had looked down earlier. She still remembered the flicker of blonde hair…

She couldn't help it; she followed.

Sakura walked quietly down the hall, not even the click of her heels accompanying her. If she didn't know better, she would have sworn that her heart was beating in her ears, what with the way it was echoing and pounding within her cranium. With the door just a few doors away, the tube in her hand seemed a little more slippery than it had been just a few seconds ago.

_Let go_.

She couldn't.

She stopped, closing her eyes and focusing internally. You're a _medic-nin_, Haruno Sakura. The Slug Princess herself and the Copycat Nin trained you. You can crush the earth beneath your fists and dispel most any genjutsu. You trained alongside Naruto Uzumaki, who has the Kyuubi tucked behind his navel.

So what are you so afraid of?

The past, she answered herself.

The past is scary. Decisions made… The people you've left behind… Seeing that all over again – seeing the results – that's _fucking terrifying_. How do you confront something when you know you're the one who did wrong? Her jaw clenched and she couldn't help but tremble.

Sakura blinked as she felt her chakra kick in to regulate her body. It balanced her hyperactive sympathetic system with the soothing feeling of her parasympathetic system slowing down her heart rate so that she could focus on reducing the results of her body freaking out.

That didn't mean that her mind was calm.

Taking a deep breath, Sakura continued down the hall and turned at the door she had seen the flash of yellow before she had met Itachi.

There she was.

But then she wasn't, and Sakura felt herself sinking into the past in the blink of an eye.

_She had been lying prone in her hospital bed for what felt like days though it couldn't have been more than a few hours, listening to the chaos outside of the building walls. There had been screaming, kunai bypassing the air, and she could have sworn she heard fire spreading. She certainly had felt the heat of a giant fireball as it passed her window, increasing the screams._

_Her hands had trembled uncontrollably and she couldn't stop it – just another reason she felt so damn _useless_. Perhaps she wouldn't have been able to do much out there anyway; after all, she was nothing much more than a hindrance to Naruto, Sasuke-kun, and Kakashi-sensei. But she was even more useless in bed, wounded and incapacitated for all intents & purposes._

_Wounded from a Windmill Triple Blades technique of all things. After training with an Uchiha for the past half year, she shouldn't have had trouble escaping it unscathed. Practicing dodging, ducking, and parrying… But if Sakura had to be honest with herself, she would have had to admit she didn't practice much. Too busy worshiping an Uchiha with her eyes, she had forgotten to worship herself – to make herself worthy of anyone._

_She should have trained harder. She should have tried to _not be a burden_. She should have known more than just basic medical jutsu._

_Should have, could have…_

_Of course, "should have" is not always the same as "reality"._

_Too bad it was too late for "would have"._

_Sakura had not looked down. She didn't want to see the thick bandages around her midsection or the way she couldn't move her legs without the bleeding starting again, sending agony rocketing up her spine and into her head until she saw starry skies with a scream._

_A medic had rushed into the room, harassed and trembling himself. She had seen the way his eyes were slightly glazed and how he almost tripped over the base of the doorframe of her room. "Kunoichi-san, I'll take care of your wound."_

_It had been painful when he unwrapped the bandages and the gaping wound had been open to the air, the lips of it not together. She vaguely remembered screaming from the pain when he held it together with his hands before channeling green medical chakra into it._

_Having it stitched together hurt just as much as when it was cleaved apart._

_At least, that's what she suspected._

_The first thing she had noticed when she was completely conscious and not distracted by the pain was the faint sound of his body hitting the ground. The second thing had been the silence that the room would have been if it hadn't been for her breathing._

_Sakura had shuddered, not wanting to look at the reason she was able to sit up. Setting her feet on the ground, she had looked up just in time to see a familiar shape in the hospital window._

"_Sakura, we're leaving."_

_She had just blinked. "Leaving, Kakashi-sensei? Then -?"_

"_There's no way to out fight them." The Sharingan in his left eye had whirled so fast that she was dizzy just looking at it. "We have to retreat – regroup, and come up with a plan to take Konoha back."_

"_But not today," she had murmured, getting to her feet, feeling a slight pang on her stomach. Shifting her hand to the area, she inserted just a little chakra there to clear up the last bit of the injury that she knew how to deal with. She had slipped a shirt over her chest bindings before looking to her sensei for instructions._

"_We have to collect as many people as we can. One injured person per healthy one," he had ordered. "Go check the last five rooms on the left side of your hall – the last one is by the drinking fountain with a purple folder attached to the door. That's the last room we need to get to."_

"_Got it."_

_Sakura ran down the hall._

_Twenty minutes later, she had found herself running back to her room just as Kakashi-sensei stashed the medic's body in the closet and shut the door unceremoniously._

_As he looked at her with concern, she had realized that tears were streaking down her face, smudging the dirt and grime from fighting even further._

_She hadn't known exactly why._

"_We've gotta go," she had rasped. Somewhere in the hospital, something was burning. There had been shouts and screams accompanied by the screech of carts being wheeled at speeds that they weren't meant to travel, but the way there was no one in their particular hallway yet…_

"_Genjutsu on the hallway?"_

"_Yes, but there's someone on the edge…" Kakashi had stiffened. "It's been disrupted. We have to go now. What-?"_

"_Too late." She hadn't had time to say anything else, no time to elabor-._

"Excuse me, but do you need something?"

Sakura blinked at the voice that broke through the fog from five years ago and froze.

She couldn't help it, even if it was for a split second.

There was no way _she_ missed it.

"In- Yes, I was trying to find the laboratory so I can get this blood looked at?" She lifted the tube from her side, watching the blood slosh from end to end.

The blonde gave her an assessing glance before giving a sharp nod. "Ah, you're the new doctor, aren't you? The new medic from Suna?"

"Yes, I'm Yamamoto Midori. " Sakura paused. She _knew_ her name. She did – just as she knew the other young woman more than she knew herself.

After all, what were best friends for?

"And you are…?" Honestly, she tried to smile. She tried to let the ends of her mouth tilt up into something friendly, but judging by the strange look on the other's face, she looked more like she was in pain.

"Yamamaka Ino." She was a little stiff. "I'm one of the medical technicians here, when I'm not performing tasks for the… Hokage. Uchiha-sama."

"Ah." Underneath the calm exterior that she _hoped_ she was showing, Sakura knew she was shaken to the very core. She hadn't expected to run into Ino so soon. If it had been up to her, she would have never seen her friend ever again because it hurt so much.

It was her fault, and she dreamed about it sometimes, the last time she had seen her. They weren't dreams so much as nightmares and she didn't want to think about it. It was enough, waking up with tears streaming down her face, without having her biggest sin walking around and breathing in the same air as her.

The air she didn't deserve to breathe.

She wasn't strong enough for this, and a quiet part of her wondered if anyone should be so strong as to be okay with betrayal.

Looking at Ino, she saw the focus on her hair.

Or, more likely, what was on her hair.

Suddenly, Sakura felt the mess remaining on the top of her head, and she itched to scratch it away with clipped fingernails – the urge to tear away something to release the tension she felt in every muscle, tendon, and ligament between her forehead and the balls of her feet.

"I should get back to Uchiha-san," she said faintly as she backed out of the room and walked as fast as she could without running.

She felt cold eyes on her back as she left.

"Okay, Uchiha-san, that's all taken care of," Sakura said quietly as she entered the room for a brief second. "I shall come and check up on you a little later. Shisui, do you have somewhere you need to be?"

She didn't wait for an answer before walking quickly to her first official patient.

His eyes followed her as she walked away too.

* * *

It was a few weeks later before she took the time to evaluate her life.

Appreciating one of her rare days off, Sakura had let her hair out of the braid so that it was free to lie on her shoulder blades. It was almost time to cut it, she mused absentmindedly, before it got in her way. She was at the morning market, browsing for little trinkets to decorate her home with, but her mind was anywhere but there. Honestly, she couldn't have named the colors of her walls if she was given a color wheel, so what was she doing?

Her life.

Work.

Yes.

That.

The hospital was constantly a flurry of activity, and it was easier to think about whether someone needed poison siphoned out of the body or what kind of antibiotic could be used for someone with pneumonia yet allergic to penicillin than Ino or Itachi.

She saw the latter and his cousin at his daily check-up. The results of his blood test had been inconclusive; his white blood cell count was normal, though this in and of itself was troublesome simply because it didn't rise – not even in the presence of infections. Really, she was surprised he was still alive considering the insignificant amount of response his immune system showed. He was lucky to not have been exposed to something with greater force to wreck against his fragile body - like tuberculosis. She shuddered at the thought of that on top of his existing symptoms. He would literally cough up his lungs. On top of that, they had also discussed his training regiment and came to an agreement that he would train a little less while increasing his protein intake. So far, there had been an improvement in his stamina, but she tried to tell him that his heart would take a while to improve.

In other words, he was a ticking time bomb.

Sakura still hadn't decided what she was going to do about him – whether she should kill him slowly, let him go, or heal him. He was next in line to be Hokage, and considering he was the favored son, it could be assumed that he would take things the same way as the current leader. That is to say, he would be a threat in the political arena as well as on the field. Take down the strong at their weakest, and for all intents and purposes, Itachi probably couldn't get any weaker if they filleted him alive.

Itachi as a person, though… he made her uncomfortable. He was quiet and intelligent, both qualities she had expected from her time with Sasuke. However, this kind of quiet was different than her former teammate's. It was more introspective than calculating, though it would be hard to compare…

Her heart clenched and her brain stopped before shifting into reverse.

Casualties _hurt_.

But she reined the pain in with the clinical practice she applied in the operating room.

Regardless of the pain being pushed away, Sakura found she wasn't in the mood to shop any longer (though part of her wondered if her heart had ever been into it). Restless and homesick – heartsick, really, because home is where the heart is, right? – she meandered around the village. Ichiraku was still around, she noted, immediately wishing she could tell Naruto that he didn't have to worry about it being rebuilt. There was the Yamanaka flower shop, Anko's favorite dango stall, the Academy…

Her heart twisted in her chest as old almost-unfamiliar sites passed, one by one.

She hadn't seen many of her previous classmates since she had come back to Konoha for reconnaissance. The questions were numerous – or, they would be, if she allowed herself to think about them. She only knew a few had escaped with her; the others might have escaped elsewhere or remained in Konoha for the past five years.

(She didn't want to think about the possibility that some _didn't make it_.)

She had spent quite a bit of time with Shikamaru during her training in Suna. There had been so much guilt there, underlining everything she did with him. Unlike him, she had at least one of her genin teammates with her, both of them accounted for, one way or another. Ino had been left behind and Chouji…

She shoved the thought away.

There were still so many people she didn't know about. So many opportunities for tragedy and salvation…

Ino, she did know of. It was almost unfortunate. Not that she was wishing she hadn't made it since the last time the two had seen each other, but… it was uncomfortable. She didn't seem to trust Sakura – or Midori-san, as she knew her. There was always this anger in her eyes that made Sakura wonder if she had been passed up on a promotion or something. For a while, she had considered that Ino _knew_ – or had guessed – and remembered their last meeting, but dismissed it just as quickly as it had come up. She had done well at not doing anything too much like her twelve-year-old self, not calling Ino by her favorite nickname, and wearing her bangs to cover her forehead – something that the blonde had told her not to do years ago.

Some part of her heard, "_Forehead, no bangs. You put the stupid things right there when people tease you, and it just makes it obvious that they're right. But it's just in your mind - they're putting thoughts in your head. But with this ribbon... it frames your face so that your forehead looks just right. Be proud, and give them nothing to use against you._" Sakura ignored that voice, as per usual.

Surprisingly, she did catch some interesting rumors when she paid attention to the rumor mills. After all, she was back for reconnaissance, right? And what's better then gossip? After all, in every story, there's a hint of the truth. There was some speculation that a certain Uchiha was pursuing the blonde – one whose best friend was almost constantly in the hospital, thus giving him an excu-.

Her thoughts were cut off when she nearly ran into someone. Muttering her apologies, she just barely caught dark eyes – like inkwells or poison – and dark hair gelled back as they passed her.

Out of old habit - one she had thought she'd forgotten - she turned and began, "Sas-," before stopping herself. There he was.

Sakura had never seen a ghost before.

He looked good, like he hadn't ever seen a day of hardship since that last training day, when she'd asked him for the last time if he wanted to go with her to that one restaurant across town that she liked with the good tempura.

The last day she had been a child.

She remembered his eyes, the way they stared at her blankly.

Just as normal.

But not really – they were a different kind of blank than usual before he said, "Yes."

The first and only … "date" she had ever been on.

It was quiet, and that's all she really noticed with the edge of her mind as she chattered inanely on this and that, too happy that all of her persistence had paid off.

(Did it? Did it _really_? asked the petty little voice in her head - the honest little voice of a young woman who didn't just see what she had wanted to see. Did Sasuke-kun _know_ something that day? Is that why he finally caved? _Pity_? Pity for poor little Haruno Sakura with the infamously large forehead who needed him and Naruto and Kakashi-sensei to fight her battles for her? Pity. What a _pity_ that can't be taken to the bank. Or save a village.)

But ghosts didn't age, did they? This Sasuke-kun was older – he was taller than her now and leaner than he had been. He had changed from that blue-white ensemble into dark clothing – almost-black pants and sleeveless shirt, bandages wrapped around his wrists – almost a shadow in the light. He still had that lethal grace that she had been envious of way back when. His eyes were different, too – they seemed even more closed off than they had in their youth.

That was to be expected though. Considering the increased arrogance of the Uchiha clan as a whole, she wasn't sure she wanted to know what he was like anymore. There was a social divide, simply based on whether you had Uchiha blood or not, she discovered. As one of the nurses had remarked when she had asked her about it, "Uchiha's don't associate with us, ah, lowly peasants."

Looking at him looking at her, Sakura didn't know what she wanted to say. "They told me you were dead." "Are you a traitor?" "Why aren't you dead?" "We think about you all of the time. Even if you didn't know it, Naruto and Kakashi-sensei really… Maybe you didn't hold us together, but you were part of Team Seven, and once a part of it, you cannot be replaced."

But she couldn't say any of that, so she did the next best thing. Shutting her mouth, Sakura turned away and hurried away as fast as she could without looking like a maniac, hoping he wouldn't go after her.

He didn't, and she wasn't surprised.

Since when did Sasuke-kun chase anything?

Where to go now?

The answer seemed obvious as it presented itself to her – a river, old wood, and a time of patience and growing up slowly.

It sounded just right.

For some reason, the bridge hadn't changed a bit – there wasn't even a scorch mark from the coup d'état. It was like a little patch of the past somewhere in the middle of a time warp. There were subtle changes in the surroundings, what with the growth of nature and the influence of man, but for the most part…

Sakura sighed as she leaned against the brown wood railing, looking at the waves of the Nakano River lapping against the rocks below. The current was almost leisurely here, but from her experience, it was a little faster farther down, closer to the Uchiha compound. There was the slight buzzing of insects on the air. She batted one away from her nose just as a warm breeze picked up, grazing the ends of her hair.

Sighing, she reached up to tie her hair in a messy bun so that the hair didn't stick to her neck in the unusually warm spring weather.

But she wasn't so distracted by the weather to not notice the way the smaller hairs at the nape of neck stood up and a cool breeze seemed to sweep through her.

Someone was there.

Someone_s_, as a matter of fact.

Before she could turn casually to at least catch a glimpse at whoever was there out of the corner of her eye, there was a flare of chakra warning her not to move if she liked her head where it was.

Familiar chakra.

"Well, hello, hello, _Sakura-chan_."

Well, this was not good.

* * *

_Thank you for reading._


	4. Idolization

**Dedication:** To Jenny, for ambushing me to demand I finish this fic (I hope you read this because I finally did it!); to Hannah, for being excited to, you know, read this; to les for beta-reading a major part & telling me that I should keep going; also to les for telling me to stop thinking so much & just _write_; to Sara, for being her amazing self; to Emily, for her passion; &, lastly, to the family – hey, I still know how to write. I think.  
**Disclaimer:** I do not own nor profit from everything you read here as they originated with Kishimoto; the only profit I receive is writing practice & joy for sketching this out.  
**Notes:** Wow... I haven't updated this in over a year. Totally apologize, especially since my lack of muse for this story made me wonder for a while whether I ever would again. Thus, I cannot make promises on updating. At this point, I have one other ItaSaku & an orig!fic that is my number one priority. However, I hope to update this this summer, so... fingers crossed? Thank you so much for your patience, though, assuming anyone still wants to read this.

Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter Three : Idolization**

"_He, who had done more than any human being to draw her out of the caves of her secret, folded life, now threw her down into deeper recesses of fear and doubt. The fall was greater than she had ever known, because she had ventured so far into emotion and had abandoned herself to it." __―__ Anaïs Nin_

* * *

Things weren't supposed to go this way.

Sakura couldn't help but think that, despite the fact that _nothing_ ever goes as planned and who was she to think things would go a certain way just because she had set her side up. After all, the world has always been built out of actions and reactions; she had thought of what she'd do in any situation, but she couldn't predict what other agents would do.

No matter her abilities – crushing things in her gloved hands, severing chakra flow, healing – she was limited to the situation she was in.

And this particular one wasn't pretty.

She contemplated moving, but the feel of strings massaging her wrist every few seconds reminded her of an early mission with Team Seven and shuriken on invisible wires as well as Shisui's name, having reached almost legendary stature before he had even reached thirty. Her shopping bags were right by her heels, hindering her movement enough to make her consider flitting away on chakra-aided feet a bad idea.

"Don't even think of turning around. Maybe you broke out of my jutsu before, but believe me when I say have many more things up my sleeve than you have ever seen before."

The voice had cold joy to it, though there was so much grimness and determination that Sakura was fooled for a moment.

Remaining silent, her mind furiously tried to calculate whether the non-existent wind was in her favor or not and whether ripping the bridge out of its place would be helpful.

"When did you realize who I was?"

A chuckle, and the voice moved to her left.

"There are some things you can't forget, no matter how hard you try. Don't you think so, Sakura-_chan_? I saw you in the marketplace. I saw the people you saw.

"The people you didn't see."

Sakura's heart was barely under her command. It wished to race, to expose itself and show fear, but she knew that she had to keep a level head. Shisui had probably activated his Sharingan, and she knew that, no matter how much she had trained, there was no way she'd outmatch him.

Besides, if she tried to fight them, how would she complete her mission? They would, theoretically, out her and she'd be shot with a katon before anyone could sneeze.

Which brought forth the question…

"Why haven't you just turned me over to the guards, Ino-pig?"

"Don't call me that, Haruno," she snapped. "We're not _friends_, anymore, so let's keep it professional. Am I clear?"

"Crystal."

"Remember that you need to stay professional, too. This isn't personal."

But Shisui was wrong. It was very personal, and there was no way anyone, no matter how qualified, could separate the past from the present completely. She could not deny having abandoned her best friend to save her own skin, and she wondered if that kind of betrayal could ever be fixed.

How could she even think to ask if they would ever be okay?

"The point is, Sakura-san," Shisui continued, "we know you are here for a reason. What we have been wondering for the past three weeks is why. As a known refugee and supporter of the old system, it would've been really dangerous for you to come back. Seeing as you are under an alias, we figured that you are working as part of a greater group. Presumably the other escapees."

"May I turn around?"

There was a pause.

"I don't want to see her face any more than I have to," Ino said.

"Then why don't _you_ turn around? It's not like I enjoy looking at your face either."

Sakura said it without thought, regretting it the second the words burst into the air. She'd meant the uncomfortable weight of guilt that settled around her shoulders and in her heart that increased tenfold every time she saw Ino. It hadn't been a personal attack, but, considering the sudden pressure of Ino's mind on hers, it had been taken as such.

"Ino, you can go back to headquarters," Shisui said tiredly. "I can handle her from here, and it would help me, to have direct eye contact."

The blonde huffed. Sakura wondered what they were doing. Staring into the river could only be fun for so long, and there was so much information to be gained from words and tone.

She focused her chakra on her wrists, slowly and quietly wearing away at the chakra threads with it until there was just a thin filament holding it together.

"We don't know what she can do, Shisui. The last time I trusted her, I ended up here, so believe me when I say the more people on this the better. Didn't you say she trained with Tsunade, one of the three Sannins? The one with super strength? If she taught Sakura healing, then I doubt she missed out on the super strength.

"And we all know you're mostly a short-distance attacker, so you'd be outmatched, even with your flashy sidest-."

In a split second, Sakura severed the strings completely and twisted around. "Okay, so I know that I was here under false pretense, but we're all on the same side, aren't we? If you thought I was going to hurt you or whatever you're doing, you would have killed me by now, so can we just be candid here and reach a conclusion this before I lose my temper?"

Ino and Shisui were standing on the bank of the river, just by the entrance to the bridge. Shisui's Sharingan was activated. Blank faced, they were both standing in very loose fighting stances, settled on the balls of their feet with their legs spread. Their hands were held in front of them, ready to initiate an attack should she make an offensive gesture, she supposed.

When it was clear they weren't going to say anything, Sakura folded her arms in front of her chest. She wasn't really a fan of telling secrets out in the open, but there were two of them and one of her, and, despite her training, she knew that they'd be evenly matched enough that her life wouldn't be secure if she didn't go with what they wanted.

For now, at least.

"Let me guess, there is some kind of resistance within Konoha which has been planning a rebellion since the coup and you are two of their double-agents."

Ignoring the way they tensed as she braced her hip against the bridge casually, she continued, "Since I'm new, they did their research – well, more than the Hokage's team did, obviously, since I'm still here – and realized that Yamamoto Midori's records were rather… flimsy. Probably questioned a few of the right people in Suna that didn't know that Midori-san had ever been their physician. Then you tracked me down my first day of work."

"Which leads to now," Shisui agreed, "except for one part: Ino recognized you when you came in for your interview with the head of the hospital. All of the background checking was just to check that it was, in fact, you."

"We're supposed to bring you to the meeting, so we can decide what to do with you," Ino said coldly. She took a step forward, more threatening than not with its graceful and hushed slight movement.

Sakura shook her head. "I can't do it today."

"This isn't because of Sasuke, is it?" Ino's eyes were narrowed until they looked like slits of ice. "He isn't who you thought he was when we were kids. You can't trust him. This proves that we can't take your judgment seriously since you are still so affected by your past. Since we have no confidence in you and we are at a larger risk than you, you have to prove yourself to us first."

She stayed firm, though, staring Ino straight in the eyes. Neither looked away as Sakura said, "You are one to talk about the past, since it's obvious you have not moved on. Presumably, you have people watching my move every minute of the day, so give me one day. Just one. I'll meet with your group tomorrow after I contact mine to give them an update. I am not going into a den of potential snakes just to satisfy you."

Shisui, examining her with a glance, shrugged before dropping his hands to his side. "That's reasonable, I suppose."

Not looking too happy, Ino kept her own arms in front of her. "I'll go tell Sensei. Make sure she isn't jerking our leg, Shisui. See you later."

She didn't address her old friend before vanishing.

Sakura blinked.

"Where'd she go?"

The Uchiha waved his hand dismissively. "To tell the team. Don't worry about it, for now. You will meet them later."

His eyes, however, remained focused on her as he brought his hands up to his lips. In a swift series of movements, they twisted and formed in the air until they stopped in the tiger formation. The wind returned around them, and, with it, the quiet gurgling of the river against rocks.

Her obliviousness to that obvious change made her want to give herself a good kick.

"A genjutsu?" she guessed. "For privacy? Presumably, Ino used her family's mind jutsu to enter it after you trapped me in it. I just can't figure out when you did that… Was it just an auditory genjutsu with, perhaps, a visual overlay for anyone who would happen to be in the perimeter…"

He grinned at her. "You're pretty smart."

"Thanks for the memo."

Shisui ceased grinning at her to stare at her seriously. The constant shifting on his mood almost unnerved her. It might've also been the fact that she hadn't expected an Uchiha to be in any effort to revert to the former government system, not to mention this one. The past three weeks had taught her that he was something of a happy-go-lucky person who tended to get along with almost everyone.

So why?

"What are you going to do about Itachi?" His voice was quiet but audible over the river flow and wind as he stepped closer to her.

The question startled her out of her mental analysis, leaving her to blink at him in confusion.

"What about him?"

"Are you going to kill him?" he asked bluntly. "Or are you actually going to help him?"

Sakura chewed on the inside of her cheek.

"I don't know," she told him. "I truly don't know."

She liked to think he knew that the miserable look on her face was real.

* * *

He walked her back to her apartment.

It wasn't as awkward as she had expected it to be, just quiet, though that only lasted for a few blocks.

"We've been partners for a few years, now, and I remember the way she looked at me when we were first assigned. Took her a few months to even let me poke her without trying to scalp me." He looked over at her.

"She seems to hate you a lot more than that."

Sakura had wondered how long he would wait before bringing it up; it had been a little longer than she'd expected, considering who she was talking to.

"You cannot hate someone a little, Shisui-san. Either you hate someone or you don't."

"Fine. She seems to hate you. Period."

Her arms hugged her tightly as they walked, her shopping bags hitting the sides of her thighs with every step. "And I gave her every reason to."

They made the rest of the way to her place, lost in their own thoughts, before he left for his own home.

As she burrowed into her bed later that night, her heart beating at a slow, steady pace, Sakura wondered where this was all going. She ignored the more cynical of the thoughts – whether the two groups will have anything to gain working together or whether it would just create a schism later, whether Shisui thought it was a lonely walk to the Uchiha compound, whether Itachi was at home or on a mission, whether Sasuke still thought of Team Seven as she, Kakashi, and Naruto thought of it or whether he was with his clansmen.

_Sasuke_…

Then sleep held her, and the thought drifted out through the slightly open window and into the occupied shadows.

* * *

The only things lighting the words on the scroll was the moon and the melting candle in front of it.

Pushing away the temptation of leaning back to crack his back, the Godaime Hokage leaned over the missive and doggedly attempted to make more ground on the day's work.

It wasn't really working.

Fugaku sighed and stood up. He padded over to the sole window in the room and looked towards the fullness of the moon. Under a shadow of the sun's bright light, the village laid out before him, full of its own shadows and dark peace. It was quiet; he noted the manned posts and allowed himself to put aside his white hat for a moment to look at all that lay before him without the scope of a leader.

He was more than that, he told himself. A husband, a father, a shinobi…

Though that all came second.

Sometimes, he regretted that.

Sometimes, he regretted that, but, as the Council always said, "There's always a bigger issue out there that puts everything else we care about behind it. Sacrifices are essential."

It made sense; after all, you cannot gain anything without using up some of your limited resources. There had to be priorities and the greater need of the whole rather than that of the view must remain intact.

The opulent crest of the gate leading into the Uchiha compound glinted brightly even in the dark as a cloud passed over the moon, the red gem embedded in its center gleaming whenever moonlight hit it at the right angle. White stucco was barely visible beyond the entrance, but stood out when he looked over the wall in rows of flat roofs. Nothing moved among the homes. His eyes softened almost visibly as he looked at the vespertine peace.

It was worth it.

He turned his back on the eastern half of Konoha, deigning to finish reading the missive as he paced around his office.

The Council of Elders had already impressed upon him the importance of this treaty with Suna. They were, after all, one of the suspected hubs of the outer resistance's activity. Very little had been happening within the village, so far as he or the Council were aware of and they were aware of more than any of the rebels thought they were.

What was of concern, however, was the increasingly volatile situation outside of the walls, where there was very limited control. There were formal alliances with the other hidden villages, most of which went back to before the coup. On official channels, they had agreed to maintain their relationships despite the change in leadership, but Fugaku was not so naïve so as to think that, if the resistance was to become a functional force, their support would leave faster than he could say, "civil war."

His brow furrowed, he continued to read.

The One-Tails host had been Kazekage for just under five years now, having come into the position a few months after his father had been killed at the chunnin exams. As far as anyone had been able to tell, it had been a genuine accident, a casualty of the chaos.

With Gaara's years of experience, even if he was younger than Fugaku's eldest son, he was capable of putting together a very tempting settlement. A lower tariff on transporting Konoha's goods into Suna, transportation of any Konoha missing-nin caught by Suna's shinobi and kunoichi in return for a modest return fee, monthly discussions about the relations between their two villages and how to improve them…

All of the changes were innocuous and, if anything, mutually beneficial.

_Too_ innocuous.

_Too_ mutually beneficial.

Fugaku frowned as he sat down at his desk. He had no doubt that the Council had already read this and had approved it with very minor changes, but there was a large part of him that found it to be more than a little suspicious…

Despite said misgivings, though, he pulled out the official stamp, pressing it into the red inkpad, and officially signed the treaty. They didn't believe without a reason, and, with the transportation and imprisonment of rebels, they would finally begin to quell like its support just as easily as they started a fire.

Placing the pad of paper in his designated finished file, he stood up to stretch, reaching for his light coat, and slipped out the window on his way down. While it was pleasantly warm during the day, one in the morning were still a little on the chilly side.

Speaking of chilly...

He began to form the signs for the transportation jutsu as the thought of his wife's reaction to his late return crossed his mind. Every time he didn't return home in time for dinner, she berated him while their sons sat neatly at the dinner table and watched as if it were the most interesting spar.

The last sign made the ramshackle houses of the east-side fade around him before his surroundings reemerged as the white stone of his family's home. There was a faint light on in the kitchen. Standing in the doorway, he saw Mikoto sitting at the table with her back to the door, reading the newspaper by candlelight. Her hand impatiently pushed a strand of hair that had fallen in front of her face behind her ear.

"Am I going to have to repeat the talk?" she asked as she turned the page.

"If you remember it, you're welcome to it." Fugaku took the seat next to her. He yearned to reach over and brush that rebellious forelock out of her way, but he knew she wouldn't take it well. In a clan where feminine dependency was the celebrated norm, Mikoto Uchiha had always been the black sheep. Even in such a small matter as this and their close relationship, she would fiercely rebuke him for "invading her personal space thoughtlessly".

A smile tugged at his lips as he watched her as she finished the article, her dark eyes intently following the words down and across the page. After over twenty-five years of marriage, he knew her well enough that she wasn't done with him, simply gathering her thoughts before confronting him again.

As he waited, Fugaku sent his chakra out in a small web to search the house, feeling the absence of Itachi in his room; presumably, his team was still out completing the mission he had assigned them a few days ago. Iwa was a day or two's journey from Konoha, so he didn't expect his son back until tomorrow at the earliest. Sasuke's chakra signature, on the other hand, was moving a bit in his room. He recalled that it was one of his few days off.

The snap of the closing newspaper drew his attention back to his wife as she neatly folded it back up and set it on the table.

"The treaty could have waited for your attention until tomorrow, and you know that."

Fugaku didn't bother asking her how she knew about it was nowhere near common knowledge; besides a genuine affection for her in their youth that had burgeoned into love, he had married her for her skills as a kunoichi in both information-collecting and battle.

Resting his elbows on the table, he looked at her. "The Council believed that we should clear it up as soon as possible. Lower costs, greater security - the Kazekage's provisions clearly would make the village even stronger, so why wait?"

"For the Council of _Uchiha_ Elders or Konoha?" she asked, staring him straight in the eyes.

"Is there a difference?"

She snorted. "You know I love you, Fugaku, but you need to look closer at this. Who really benefits from the rebels being collected? Who has _really_ gained anything from us taking charge of the village while most people lose and mumble malcontent when they think no one can hear?"

He couldn't help but stare at her. It had been clear to him from the beginning that she had not approved of the coup, but had, characteristically, kept her mouth shut.

"Do you know how close you are to treason?" Fugaku whispered.

Mikoto leveled him with a look. Even though the hair at her temples was starting to whiten and slight wrinkles had formed in the outer corners of her eyes, she could still send the same bullshitting look she had when they were children. "You're the Hokage, dear. Is candid speech now illegal, especially when it is the truth?"

Shifting uncomfortably in his seat, he looked away from the accusation.

"It's only getting later, the longer we sit here," he told the plate of uneaten onigiri by the sink. "We should turn in."

There was not even a sigh as she stood up.

Walking down the hallway, the last thing she said before they got in bed was, "Sometimes, I wonder if you're still the same person I fell in love with. I love our family and I think we've raised Itachi and Sasuke well – that you have been a great father and I a good mother. Perhaps they are not who the Council wishes they were. God knows they wanted weak-willed followers who would bring just the clan glory and give them the greatest hold, but the village is bigger than that. You wear the Hokage's hat, not them, you know, and you have the ability to bring the entire village to greatness. I know I can't tell you how to run the village – you are, despite your unwavering faith in the elders, a good leader.

"But if you don't seek to open your eyes, you will never ascend to greatness."

* * *

Nine o'clock in the morning brought forth a cheery ray of sunshine to fall through every window in the hospital. Sakura could feel it in her smile as she trotted down the hall to her small office on the fifth floor.

To be fair, it was a nice enough office, even if it wasn't as big as the one Gaara had set up for her in Suna. It had just enough room for a desk, a free-spinning desk chair, a bookcase, and an extra chair for someone else to sit in.

However, the key, Sakura thought, was the view.

At first glance, it was nothing special. Directly east of the Hokage's office, the far side of the hospital faced the poorest district within Konoha. Every day, she looked upon those who had next to nothing. There were people sitting on street corners, wearing all they owned on their backs, quietly soliciting anyone who came by; she saw old women, their legs splayed into the streets, calling for spare change, any change, please change.

Some days, she saw little boys and girls dropping food into the laps of the old. Her heart jerked as she thought about their opportunities, or lack thereof. They wouldn't be able to pay for admittance into the ninja academy, assuming the clans even let them in in the first place. There was, she supposed, the community school in the northern district, but she didn't hold out any hope for that…

She noticed the children, playing with spare plastic bottles, kicking them into buckets. Very frequently, they were covered in more grime than could be found in and on most any dumpster.

Their smiles were bright, brighter than any she had ever seen on Sasuke-kun's face.

Today, she had very little time to watch, though. Mogusa-san ran a tight ship, meaning she needed to catch up on her paperwork before she left at the end of her double shift in… Sakura checked her pocket watch.

Seven hours. There would be a brief break for lunch, she promised herself, if she finished half of her paperwork by noon.

She needed to get her hair cut again, she remembered, blowing her bangs out of her face. The last time she'd gotten it done was before she left Suna, and she hadn't done more than apply the conditioner that came with the dye in a week. She would have to get both that done before Ino came by her apartment at eight to escort her to the meeting place…

After scrawling, "Hair," on a post-it and sticking it to the mini-board by her desk, she pushed the sleeves of the green turtleneck under her scrubs to her elbows before hunkering down and attacking the pile at the front of her desk.

Two hours passed slowly and the work even more so, but there was an obvious dent in the pile that was left to do. Her hair tied back, Sakura inclined in her chair in an attempt to get rid of the small ache in the small of her back after being hunched over for hours. It took almost bending over backwards to get the audible crack of her back accompanying the feeling of relief.

She took a moment to close her eyes and enjoy the fresh air coming in through the window. It brought with it the bargain calls of venders and shrieking of mothers after mischievous offspring.

A slice of life.

There was a knock at the door, and Sakura reluctantly sat up again.

"The front desk told me I'd find you here," said the ghost. Black eyes blinked, unfair eyelashes shielding them from her view, and he tilted his head.

"I hope you appreciate it, because you will not believe how many times I had to say no to offers for lunch, some even reluctantly. I suppose they're a testament to the fact that you _can_, in fact, have brains and beauty."

In a testament to _her_ skills, Sakura managed to get her jaw off the floor before he finished talking. "What are you doing here?"

Sasuke blinked nonchalantly at her. "Taking you to lunch."

"It's not time for my lunch break."

Her stomach grumbled, and Sakura wanted to hit herself. Out of any possible excuse to get out of having lunch with him, she offered _that one_? Why not, "I already ate"? Or "I have plans"? Or, most obviously, "I don't know you"? Lie as it was, it was true as far as he knew it. The way he raised a single eyebrow to counter her logic made it obvious that he found it as pathetic as she had.

"Mogusa said it was fine."

"Sorry, but I don't want any favors. And you don't even _know_ me. Do you regularly take people you aren't familiar with out for food? Surely your mother taught you about stranger danger."

He spread his arms, right shoulder braced against the door siding. "You remind me of someone I know, even if I just saw you for a second."

Walking forward, he grasped her hand. "And I'm Sasuke. Uchiha Sasuke."

Scrutinizing him, she unsubtly looked him over, from the familiar hairstyle to the tip of his sandals. Unsurprisingly, he was wearing the green of a jounin, now, over the dark blue of his clan and its symbol on the sleeves of the shirt. Her heart clenched as she remembered short-lived dreams to don the vest.

It's not too late, she told herself firmly.

"What if I don't want to go?"

"Then I'd call you a liar."

Before she could shriek and call him out on his narcissistic attitude, he held up a hand. "I didn't say it because I think I am that great, though there is much evidence for that statement."

A small gesture towards her face, he said, "Your eyes lit up when I mentioned lunch. Then there's the fact that have a little clock there, counting down to noon, and your eyes have been darting to it every so often for the past… five minutes. And do I have to mention your stomach?"

Her face heated up and she bit her lower lip.

This couldn't be a good idea under any circumstance. Who knows if he'd really recognized her and was just trying to pull her out of the hospital under false circumstances so as to put her away for good? Torture her for information with the Sharingan? And, even if he didn't recognize her now, that wasn't to say he wouldn't while they were out for lunch.

But Sakura rationalized; she knew enough to get away should it turn out to be a trap.

Maybe it was just the hunger speaking when she said, "If I get fired, I hope you know you're going to be liable for compensation."

He smirked, and part of her childhood just about _died_.

Or fainted. She wasn't quite sure at this juncture.

"No need to worry..." he peeked at the name on her desk, "Yamamato Midori."

* * *

**Further Author's Note:** I'm test-driving Sasuke for now, so I apologize for inconsistencies.. He's not all angsty, but also not a tease or a playboy. He talks (evidence above) and is close to his mother more than his father. Most importantly, he is showing interest in _a_girl, but that doesn't mean he loves her or anything.

Most importantly, he is something of a gentleman. His mother has taught him (& Itachi) well.

I suppose I should take the time to note that, while this is ItaSaku (for sure), it will take a while to get there. Sakura's indecision about holding Itachi's life in her hands is, as the last chapter showed, not necessarily due to personal feelings for him but by her official & perceived duties. She treats him a few days awake, &, obviously, her relationship (however that goes) affects how Itachi interacts with her.

Thanks for reading, & feel free to ask questions. :)


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